fortnite

fortnite

The game, Fortnite, is officially out of beta and now available on mobile.  Which means, anyone with an iPhone SE/6S or later running iOS 11 can download the game and start playing.  If you have an iPad mini 4, or Air 2 or later, you should be able to play the game as well.  Epic made the announcement on its Twitter feed on Monday morning.  Previously the iOS version of Fortnite had only been available as an invite-only.  Those invites were generously given out and friends were able to invite up to three more players.  So it’s not like people haven’t been playing it.  But now, formally, everyone can.

This is also a really good, and interesting strategy, in my opinion, to get more players excited about the game.  Or at least talking about the game.  Epic also has an interesting business model strategy, making it sustainable.  The game is free-to-play but has things like an optional three-month subscription service.  This is thanks to its rival PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.  But the game’s also incredibly fun.  Both of these factors have helped its incredible rise in sales, popularity, and even mainstream recognition.  Can you say, Drake?

fortnite

Another reason that this is so wildly popular has to do with the update cycle.  This has helped Fortnite remain at the front of this game category.  PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has been slow to get updates, which I think is starting to hurt them.  They are coming out with a new map soon, so perhaps that will give Fortnite a run for its money?  My guess is no since Fortnite added a new and improved snipers-only game mode just last week.  It also includes a homing missile weapon and a number of in-game clues pointing toward the destruction of the game’s Tilted Towers section.  This is a potentially game-changing event for a persistent multiplayer game that now has the whole community talking and swapping theories on online forums.

That, my friends, is why I think Fortnite is doing so well.  Sure, they’re updating the game to make it more enticing to users, but they’re also doing a stellar job of marketing this game.  Think about it.  They are rumored to implement some kind of new feature or update (what doesn’t matter), and then suddenly they have the whole community talking about what it will be and sharing their theories with each other.  This promotes a lot of hype around the game.

fortnite

They have also been slowly rolling the game out.  Only offering it to certain people.  Those people invite their friends, and then they all get online and rave about how much they love the game.  Thus creating a ton of free promotion.  Sure, the game has to be good to start with – and it is – but this is the kind of press that you can’t buy.  Now that it’s available for everyone using iOS, it’s only a matter of time before they will have to come up with some kind of new strategy.  What that will be and when it will be available is anyone’s guess.

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